Difficult Genius: My Afternoon With Charles James

This is get-even time for Charles James. For the brilliant couturier, who died in 1978, in debt and underappreciated at the age of 72, to see his name on a banner outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art would have been sweet revenge. He was big on grudges, and one of them was against the museum's Costume Institute.

In 1975, as a writer at New York magazine, I paid a visit to James’s Lysol-scented digs at the Chelsea Hotel on 23rd Street. The place was a mess, except for the fashion designer’s meticulously ordered work table. I asked him about “American Women of Style,” the just-opened Costume Institute exhibit at the Met, which featured not a single gown by James, even though one of the women honored at the exhibit, Millicent Rogers, was a Standard Oil heiress he had dressed repeatedly—and lavishly—over the years. Several important gowns James created for Rogers were housed at the Brooklyn Museum, and a loan could easily have been arranged. “So why wasn’t I in that show?” James asked bitterly.

The only person who could answer that question was Diana Vreeland, the former Vogue editor and Costume Institute curator who had put together the show, and so later, I asked her why James had been left out. “I didn’t look for his clothes, and I didn’t see them,” she told me, gesturing for emphasis with her long red fingernails. “I don’t think they’re vital to this show. The whole Charles James thing is despairing.”

James’s desire for acclaim could, indeed, be overwhelming. “I’m a legend. A master of magic. I’ve always been known for innovation,” he told me. “Dior said I inspired the New Look. Schiaparelli bought from me for her private wardrobe. Chanel once borrowed a cape of mine to wear in a show. Norell bought designs from me. Poiret said, ‘I pass my crown on to you. You do with scissors what I do with color.’ Madame Grès saw my work for the first time recently and nearly fainted. I’m the most copied person in the world.“

What he didn’t mention that day at the Chelsea Hotel was the one thing that had actually brought him great notoriety: He designed the gowns for a groundbreaking series of ads for Modess sanitary napkins that were seen by legions of magazine readers. Evidently, that was the sort of fame Charles James didn't relish. So many years later, it's nice to see him get the recognition he deserves.